nothing more odious to the Catholic Church than this advertised,
practical polygamy, this subvention granted indifferently to all
cults, this patronage in common, more insulting than abandonment, this
equal treatment[11] which places the pulpit of truth and the pulpits
of falsehood, the ministry of salvation and the ministries of
perdition, on the same footing. Nothing is more serviceable for
alienating a Catholic clergy, for making it consider civil power as
foreign, usurping, or even inimical, for detaching the Gallican Church
from its French center, for driving it back towards its Roman center
and for handing it over to the Pope.

Henceforth, the latter is the unique center, the sole surviving head
of the Church, inseparable from it because he is naturally its head
and because it is naturally his body; and all the more because this
mutual tie has been strengthened by trials. Head and body have been
struck together, by the same hands, and each on the other's account.
The Pope has suffered like the Church, along with and for it. Pius
VI., dethroned and borne off by the Directory, died in prison at
Valence; Pius VII., dethroned and carried off by Napoleon, is
confined, sequestered and outraged for four years in France, while all
generous hearts take sides with the oppressed against his oppressors.
Moreover, his dispossession adds to his prestige: it can no longer be
claimed that territorial interests prevail with him over Catholic
interests; therefore, according as his temporal power diminishes his
spiritual power expands, to such an extent that, in the end, after
three-quarters of a century, just at the moment when the former is to
fall to the ground the latter is to rise above the clouds; through the
effacement of his human character his superhuman character becomes
declared; the more the sovereign prince disappears, the more does the
sovereign pontiff assert himself. The clergy, despoiled like him of